Weekend Tids and Bits

 

 

Pravda and RNC Agree On America’s Direction – The Republican National Committee took some heat for calling the Democrats socialists, but they’ve been vindicated by no less an authority than the online edition of Pravda, the famed Russian daily. Stanislav Mishin writes on May 29 that “It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.” You can catch more from conservative Republicanism’s  apparent new soulmate at:

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-1/

***

Never Lie to Liars might be advice former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik would find interesting. He’s been indicted by a Washington, D.C. federal grand jury for lying to Bush White House officials who were considering him for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Kerik’s lawyer says his client is innocent. Some speculate the alleged lies were discovered as part of a routine Bush White House search for weapons of mass destruction.

***

Clever, Those Open Meetings Advocates – One of the newspaper heavyweights who showed up at a non-publicized  meeting in Chicago’s O’Hare Hilton to talk about “Models to Lawfully Monetize Content” on the web was quoted in Editor & Publisher as saying the meeting wasn’t secret because a sign on the hotel room door said “NAA Meeting.” That could clearly identify it as a meeting of the nation’s top newspaper brass under the umbrella of Newspaper Association of America, with headquarters on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, VA. Of course, it could also identify a meeting of the National Apartment Association (NAA) also with headquarters on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, VA. Or the National Auctioneers Association (NAA), Overland Park, KS., or the National Aeronautic Association  (NAA) of Washington, D.C., or. . .

***

 

 

Full and Complete Disclosure And Then Some continues to come to Louisiana politics with the latest announcement by porn star Stormy Daniels that she’s formed an exploratory committee to gauge interest for a possible run against U.S. Senator David Vitter. She’s currently on a listening tour. Political insiders wonder whether or not a possible Senate run would falter on face recognition, since that’s the potential candidate’s least-photographed feature.

***

 

Reporting Well Is The Best Revenge

 

Leaders of supposedly competitive businesses who get together and discuss things tempt both fate and the federal anti-trust laws, especially if the discussion is about prices. And if they lead big enough companies with high public profiles, they can probably count on having five business reporters for every meeting invitee.

 

Unless, of course, they’re the titans who employ most of the reporters. Then they can simply not say anything and feel safe from the glare of the media spotlights they own and control.

 

That must have been the reasoning as a couple of dozen certified media hotshots fluttered into the O’Hare Hilton Thursday for a discreet Newspaper Association of America-prompted discussion sanitarily titled “Models To Lawfully Monetize Content.” The discussion among most major U.S. newspaper publishers was so lawful, in fact, the NAA would later say it took place “with anti-trust counsel present.”

 

That’s reminiscent of a couple of young Alaskans who said they used protection, but anyway, the hush-hush meeting’s agenda was said to have an 8:10 a.m. kickoff.

 

James Warren had it on The Atlantic’s web site at 8:31.

 

In detail. With names of individuals and the companies they represented, the topics to be discussed and Warren’s take on the day, including the full disclosure that as a former managing editor and Washington bureau chief of The Chicago Tribune:

 

 “At the behest of new corporate superiors (yes, some from radio), I helped oversee the painful layoffs of about 100 in the Chicago Tribune newsroom last year, before being dispatched by someone the Marlon Brando character in ‘Apocalypse Now’ might characterize as ‘an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect the bill.’”

 

A less-sanitized title of the NAA’s meeting might have been “We’re All Bleeding Ad Dollars, So How Do We Start Making A Buck From The Content We’ve Been Giving way For Free?” And a person without a trusting soul might speculate that on the advice of counsel, all the participants were thinking individually, by coincidence and without collusion that “if we all stick together, here we might pull this off.”

 

But that’s speculation.

 

What isn’t speculation is that Warren’s reporting found its way into the online worlds of Editor & Publisher, Poynter Online’s Romenesko, Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab, Politico, Slate, The Huffington Post, Gawker, MediaWeek, mediabistro.com and elsewhere. The story even made the AP’s news report, which dutifully mentioned that AP CEO Tom Curley had been at the meeting.

 

You remember reporting. It used to be done in newspapers, and some of it still is.

 

But as James Warren just demonstrated, including to a couple of dozen media moguls who shouldn’t have needed the lesson, reporting doesn’t depend on newspapers. Newspapers, especially ones seeking to replacer ad dollars with content dollars, might hope to depend on reporting.

 

You know, reporting from the folks who’ve been let go by the thousands, or had their salaries and benefits slashed to keep up debt payments or stock prices for the bonus babies at the helm.

 

So here’s hoping reporters will continue to report, but not in newspapers – reporting well is the best revenge.

###

See Warren’s Atlantic piece at: http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/james_warren/2009/05/shhhh_newspaper_publishers_are_quietly_holding_a_very_very_important_conclave_today_will_you_soon_be.php

###